[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Removing the almighty experience point...

[Caliban Darklock]

On 10/4/07, Vincent Archer <archer at frmug.org> wrote:
>
> You can't take the easiest mob, and say, I'll kill them
> for 1h or so for some xp.

That's true. Instead, you take a LIST of the easiest TASKS, and say
"I'll do these for an hour or so to earn some ACHIEVEMENTS."

You aren't actually solving the problem. You're just moving it. You're
artificially redefining the system, but it's the same system. Instead
of "where do I get the most XP", the question becomes "what's the
optimal order of achievements". The elite player - to whom you want to
appeal - is not going to be fooled by this. He's going to figure out
in pretty short order that this game is just like the last game, only
the treadmills are farther apart and don't run as long.

Again, the grind is a solution, not a problem. You don't solve the
grind by chopping it up and spreading it around. The only reason
players accept the grind as a solution is because it's convenient.
Making it less convenient does not solve a problem, it simply uncovers
the same one you always had - low levels suck, and over time they suck
more.

Without the convenience of the grind, there's no solution to this
problem. So the players will redefine the grind. If they can't,
they'll leave, because your game sucks.

> You need to achieve something special, something
> you haven't done before.

These aren't the same thing. As a player, what's special is up to me
and me alone. If I think it would be cool to run through area X and
kill every mob in my path, that's special. If you arbitrarily decide
that none of this counts because I've killed all those mobs before,
your game sucks.

And determining whether a player has done something before rather
depends on knowing what a player is doing. This is an impossible task.
It can't be done. Among other things, some of your players have
radically different thought processes than you do.

> > >You're trying to decouple advancement from enjoyment,
> >
> > Looks like you're getting the idea at last :P
>
> Yup. Enjoy the game, and you will advance.

That's the exact opposite of what I said. If I like doing the same
thing over and over, that's my enjoyment. You're telling me I can't
advance that way. Instead, you want me to romp all over your game
world finding new things to do all the time, and I don't think that's
fun. I don't enjoy that at all. So if I enjoy the game, I *don't*
advance. They're mutually exclusive things.

In an XP system, whatever I enjoy - no matter how retarded it might
look to you - generates a slow but steady XP return. That leads to
people finding interesting and unusual ways to enjoy themselves.

Your system defines a linear series of paths where I can advance. If I
don't do what you say to do, I can't advance. If I don't think that's
fun, and I want to do something else, I have to choose between
enjoyment and advancement. And that's not fair, so your game sucks.

> So the system is for people who want advancement. It is not for people
> who think advancement comes from doing simple and easy thing over and over.

Unfortunately, it does. You advance from novice to expert by
practicing the basics, over and over again, for years. That's reality.
When your system denies this, I tend to suspect it's because you don't
like the way reality works, and are trying to rewrite the rules in
your own private world for reasons best discussed with a therapist.

The problem with this system is that it's too special-case. It will
burn design time like you wouldn't believe, and that design time is
not going to produce a scalable result. It is a waste. You can't
profit from this. You can't even sell this. And the cardinal crime of
the system is that IT ISN'T EVEN INTERESTING. There's no emergent
behavior or systemic interaction that falls out of this, except what
XBox Live has already demonstrated.

It's just a deadweight loss. It can't work; you can argue all you want
about how smart you are and how perfectly you've balanced everything
and how efficiently your designers produce content, but you still have
to sell this system to players, and in the end players are not going
to like it. You're too smart to waste your time on this system. Find a
real problem and build a real solution.